The businesses making millions from Trump's child separation policy

President Donald Trump halted his policy of separating families at the border Wednesday by executive order following massive public outcry. But it may have already cost American taxpayers millions of dollars for a policy most of them oppose, according to media reports.

Behind the immigration policy are a handful of companies and nonprofit groups earning tens of millions to house migrant children separated from their parents. Mr. Trump's new order keeps key elements of his "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting illegal border crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families operates 100 shelters across 17 states, with 11,786 children held as part of what's called the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program, according to a report from Yahoo News citing the agency. From May 5 to June 9, 2,342 children were separated from their parents, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The UAC program, set up to provide shelter and services for migrant children that cross the border without a parent, has a fiscal 2018 budget of $1.3 billion. Companies are typically awarded contracts that act as an open purchase order, allowing requests from agencies like HHS to be filled quickly until they reach their full amount.

Just before Mr. Trump signed the order ending the family-separation policy, NBC reported that new "tent cities" built to handle the influx of children cost more than keeping families together.

The U.S. Defense Department is preparing to house as many as 20,000 migrant children at the request of HHS, according to media reports late Thursday citing a memo to lawmakers that was confirmed by a military spokesman. The sites, which were requested to be ready as early as July, would be run by HHS and existing contractors, according to the Washington Post. The plan looks similar to 2014, when the Obama administration housed about 7,000 unaccompanied children on three military bases, the Post said.

Here are some companies cited in media reports and government contract listings.

Southwest Key Programs
A large nonprofit organization with about a dozen facilities in Texas, Southwest Key Programs may get more than $458 million in fiscal 2018, Bloomberg recently reported citing government data.

That's the biggest contract in the system of government agencies, companies and organizations administering the detention centers for children, including those taken from their families at the border, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said according to Bloomberg.

Southwest Key's facilities got an influx of new children under the zero tolerance policy, accounting for about 10 percent of the minors in its care, said Lizzie Chen, a spokesperson for the organization, in an email to CBS News. An "influx of unaccompanied minors" also increased demand for space in the facilities, which Chen said are licensed for child care.

Southwest Key's shelters include a former Walmart store in Brownsville, Texas, that has come under scrutiny by Congress and the press. The organization's top executive, Juan Sanchez, was paid $786,000 in 2015, up from about $269,000 in 2010 according to Bloomberg. His compensation nearly doubled to $1.5 million in 2016, Bloomberg said, citing tax records for an Austin charter school he founded.

"Southwest Key Programs does not support separating families at the border and we are pleased that the President has ended this policy," Chen wrote. "We believe keeping families together is better for the children, parents and our communities, and we remain committed to providing compassionate care and reunification."

MVM
Based in Virginia, MVM said its contracts cover transport services for undocumented families and unaccompanied children to HHS facilities. Among the company's contracts is one for to $9.5 million. MVM spent about $3,100 of that total as of this week, according to Yahoo News and GovTribe, which tracks government contracts.

There's a "misperception" about MVM's services, said Joe Arabit, director of the company's homeland security and public safety unit, in an emailed statement. MVM doesn't operate shelters or "any other type of housing for minors," he wrote.

The Daily Beast reported earlier this month that the company posted job openings for "rapid deployment of an emergency influx shelter for unaccompanied children." MVM took down listings "related to readiness operations under the current zero tolerance policy," Arabit said. MVM hasn't "pursued any new contracts associated with undocumented families and children since the implementation of the current policy."

Comprehensive Health Services
Comprehensive Health Services has contracts valued up to $65 million for shelter and related services, according to the Yahoo report and GovTribe. A job listing, one of two dated June 20, seeks a lead case manager to "ensure coordinated case management and family reunification services for children in a children's residential facility." The employee is "responsible for the safe and timely release of all children to appropriate care."

The Florida-based company has received most of available funding through the listed contracts, Yahoo said. A spokesman referred all questions in "unaccompanied alien children" contracts to HHS's Administration for Children and Families' Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Dynamic Service Solutions
Dynamic Service Solutions holds a contract awarded last year valued up to $8.7 million for "shelter care" for unaccompanied children, Yahoo reported. The Maryland-based company's CEO, Darnell Armstrong, referred Yahoo News to HHS for comment. It didn't return a CBS MoneyWatch request to talk about its contracts.

Exodyne
Exodyne was awarded contracts valued at up to $5.6 million through its Dynamic Educational Systems unit, according to reports and GovTribe. The Phoenix-based company didn't respond to a request for comment from CBS MoneyWatch.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"

^if it's a holiday why put the kids in school? You can't just enrol them for a few weeks. If ur wife is Thai woking on a tourist visa might be risky

Would be for 2 , 3 months, not a few weeks, why would it be risky if my wife is Thai, different rules for Australians/UK/EU.

Don't know the system, but seems California pays welfare to illegals, free schools, housing and medical, how much will they pay to support my family as illegals, or does the system only support people south of the border.

Free paid holiday adventure to the USA sounds good, anyone one want to tell me the real rule/law that stops us going for a working, illegal long stay holiday.

Don't want to end up in jail, but seems from what I have read, they just tell you to leave if you get stopped, true or not.
No problem leaving, will have open return tickets.

It’s not something you’ll learn from the US mainstream news…so here it is:
The chaos in Central America that brings tens of thousands of desperate people to our borders each year was and is largely made in the USA. The US armed and continues to arm dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

In Nicaragua in the 1980s, the US government funded terrorists (“the Contras”) who murdered peasants and destroyed social infrastructure in the countryside like medical clinics and agricultural processing centers – all to stimulate “regime change”, an objective the US still has and it working on in that country.

In Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, dictators we supported used our arms, training and encouragement to form death squads that targeted religious leaders, labor leaders, health care workers, university professors, and anyone who called for reform.

And some people wonder why these countries are in chaos with refugees showing up on our border.

Note: “The School of the Americas” is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Coordination.

Key to answering this question is what the Border Patrol calls the “Consequence Delivery System” (CDS). In its 2012-2016 National Strategic Plan the Border Patrol announced the CDS as the backbone of its transition from a “resource-based” to a “risk-based” approach to its enforcement mission. According to the agency:

“The CDS measures the consequences applied to persons illegally entering the country against defined alien classifications. CDS provides a process designed to uniquely evaluate each subject and apply the appropriate post-arrest consequences to that individual to break the smuggling cycle and end the subject’s desire to attempt further illegal entry. The CDS is a means of standardizing the decision-making process regarding the application of consequences and provides for the evaluation of outcome effectiveness.”

The litany of “consequences” that can be applied to an apprehended individual include:

prosecution through Operation Streamline

“fast track” prosecution for illegal reentry

lateral repatriation – wherein individuals are separated from travel companions (including loved ones) and deported to ports of entry far from the site of apprehension

Would be for 2 , 3 months, not a few weeks, why would it be risky if my wife is Thai, different rules for Australians/UK/EU.

Don't know the system, but seems California pays welfare to illegals, free schools, housing and medical, how much will they pay to support my family as illegals, or does the system only support people south of the border.

Free paid holiday adventure to the USA sounds good, anyone one want to tell me the real rule/law that stops us going for a working, illegal long stay holiday.

Don't want to end up in jail, but seems from what I have read, they just tell you to leave if you get stopped, true or not.
No problem leaving, will have open return tickets.

Nothing to worry about. It's a free country built by immigration labor. Gov is even putting new arrivala up for free. No other country loves immigrants like America does.

Thousands demonstrate across the US against family separations carried out by the Trump administration

From New York City and Washington DC to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and in hundreds of cities and towns in between, thousands of Americans protested on Saturday against Trump administration policies that separated more than 2,000 undocumented immigrant children from their families and have left the vast majority of such children still held in federal facilities.

No official figures for the protests were immediately available, but organizers said they had expected more than 750 events to be held.
Protesters said they were concerned about many issues, but one message – as intended by organizers – rose above all others: Families Belong Together.
The protests happened despite oppressive heat. In some cities, the heat index topped 105F (40C).

Celebrities also came out to rallies to voice their opposition to Trump and his policies, including the singer Alicia Keys, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, actress America Ferrera, singer John Legend and many more.

Progressive politicians, among them some potential Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, joined protesters and addressed the various crowds. Their main message was simple: vote. With a high-stakes November midterm election approaching – one that could tip the balance of power in Washington – many high-profile politicians gave speeches, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Kamala Harris and Representative Maxine Waters of California, and the Georgia congressman and civil rights movement veteran John Lewis, who spoke to a protest in Atlanta.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, was at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He was due to begin interviews of potential supreme court nominees. A crowd of around 200 protesters picketed a roadside nearby.

The double standards inherent in U.S. partisan politics have led some to believe that concentration camps were reintroduced on such a broad scale under Trump, when in fact the mass confinement of asylum-seekers and non-citizens was a daily reality under the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who both oversaw the expansion of the sprawling DHS machinery.

Indeed, ever since the Clinton administration’s 1996 Immigration Act, minor misdemeanor convictions are enough reason for even legal permanent residents to be deported.

This history is often ignored by liberal critics of the Trump regime, owing in no small part to his absolute disregard for the multicultural sensitivities of his predecessors who built the immigration enforcement apparatus.

The president has no qualms about resorting to blatantly dehumanizing rhetoric when describing whole categories of asylum-seekers as “animals” that are “infesting” the United States, drawing comparisons between the right-wing U.S. leader’s political ideology and that of Nazi Germany.

Yet Trump is merely picking up the baton that was passed to him, albeit with a relish that appears to be both calculating and visceral.

After September 11, 2001, the U.S. was pushed over the brink by hysteria over the fear of another spectacular terrorist attack. Muslim Americans and immigrant communities from Asia, Africa and the Middle East became the target not only of racist attacks on the streets, but also of anti-terrorism bills like the USA PATRIOT Act. The act significantly widened the ability of immigration agents to conduct mass-detention sweeps of terrorism suspects, while allowing for the mandatory detention of non-citizens suspected of terrorism for up to 48 hours after arrest.

In 2003, the PATRIOT Act was followed by the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which consisted of three separate bureaus: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS). ICE began to extend its facilities, field offices and subfield offices across the country.

In June, 2003, ICE introduced its 10-year strategic enforcement plan, Operation ENDGAME. The plan called for information sharing across government agencies while also explicitly calling for the forcible removal of the entire unauthorized migrant population of 12 million people from the United States by 2014. In a memorandum describing the program, ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) director Anthony Tangemann stated:

DRO provides the endgame to immigration enforcement and that is the removal of all removable aliens. This is also the essence of our mission statement and the ‘golden measure’ to our successes … We must strive for 100% removal rate.”

Obviously, the plan was never fulfilled, yet the Obama administration stubbornly pushed forward in the fortification of ICE as a highly-funded, fully-staffed and largely unaccountable organization with facilities and contracted privately-operated concentration camps dotting the entire country.

While supporters of Obama will quickly point to his 2013 granting of temporary relief to non-prioritized unauthorized migrant youth, in the form of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), immigration-rights advocates will be just as quick to point to his introduction of Secure Communities: A Comprehensive Plan to Identify and Remove Criminal Aliens (SCOMM).

SCOMM, which was guided by the goals stipulated in Operation Endgame, cleared the way for ICE to deport hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants through biometric data-sharing between federal immigration authorities and thousands of local jails — leading to the deportation of people convicted of minor crimes such as driving under the influence or the possession of small amounts of drugs.

SCOMM was eventually phased out by Obama owing to public pressure, only to be revived by the Trump administration. Obama’s campaign promises to reform the U.S. immigration enforcement regime were never fulfilled and instead, around three million were deported on his watch – earning the former president the ignominious title “Deporter-In-Chief.”

In 2003, the PATRIOT Act was followed by the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which consisted of three separate bureaus: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS). ICE began to extend its facilities, field offices and subfield offices across the country.

The double standards inherent in U.S. partisan politics have led some to believe that concentration camps were reintroduced on such a broad scale under Trump, when in fact the mass confinement of asylum-seekers and non-citizens was a daily reality under the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who both oversaw the expansion of the sprawling DHS machinery.

That is an outright right wing lie. The Obama administration assigned a court date to asylum seekers and then released them. The site you are quoting is a propaganda site for the Syrian government and is funded by Russia.

That is an outright right wing lie. The Obama administration assigned a court date to asylum seekers and then released them. The site you are quoting is a propaganda site for the Syrian government and is funded by Russia.

> But arguably the greatest impact has been erroneous rumours spreading in Central America that minors arriving alone would be granted "permits" to stay in the US – when in reality they are issued with "permisios" (notices) to appear in deportation hearings. <